Gabrielle Rudenko

Gabrielle Rudenko is an Associate Professor at the University of Texas Medical Branch, a member of the Sealy Center for Structural Biology and Molecular Biophysics, as well as the Department of Pharmacology & Toxicology.

Dr. Rudenko received her Ph.D. training at the Rijksuniversiteit Groningen (Netherlands) and University of Washington (USA) under mentorship of Professors Wim Hol and Alessandra d’Azzo. Subsequently, Dr. Rudenko carried out postdoctoral training at UT Southwestern Medical Center (USA) mentored by Professor Johann Deisenhofer collaborating with Professors Thomas Südhof, Michael Brown and Joseph Goldstein on the three dimensional structure of cell surface receptors and synaptic adhesion molecules.

The Rudenko laboratory focusses on proteins underlying molecular mechanisms of neuropsychiatric disease and developing novel therapeutic strategies for these disorders. Targets under study include proteins implicated in autism spectrum disorder, schizophrenia, drug addiction, cognitive decline, as well as other neuropsychiatric disorders. Much of the work revolves around proteins that mediate synapse development, especially the growing class of synaptic organizers that shape protein interaction networks in the synaptic cleft. We use a combination of structural biology, biochemical and biophysical methods, proteomics, and chemical genomics to determine how these molecules shape synaptic connections and contribute to neural circuit formation.